


clamour

by jamnesias



Series: Untitled Holmes/Watson series [1]
Category: Sherlock Holmes (Downey films)
Genre: F/M, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-09-19
Updated: 2012-09-19
Packaged: 2017-11-14 15:03:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,185
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/516627
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jamnesias/pseuds/jamnesias
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>'His is a unique rhythm Holmes can shut his eyes and pick out in the midst of any crowd on any of London’s hectic streets.'</p><p>Holmes knows Watson by sound alone.</p>
            </blockquote>





	clamour

**[clamour]**

The sound of him, of course, of course he comes with his own _sound_ – his is a unique rhythm Holmes can shut his eyes and pick out in the midst of any crowd on any of London’s hectic streets. Cobbles, stone or grit and damp, sucking sand; these things hardly present a challenge any more.  
  
Midday in mid-summer in Brompton – this is a mere trifle. Albeit muggy, smelly, thick, loud and crushingly humid to the point of tangibility. Holmes feels he could pass a handkerchief in front of his face, find it left heavy with the air. His hair is sticking to the back of his neck, the cloth of his collar damp as if a mouth were pressed there, breathing. He lolls against the hot bricks in the shade of a conveniently gauche taxidermist’s awning, waits for Watson, and considers.  
  
Watson has a specific melody. Quick feet and cane tapping, the rhythmic walk of a Scotsman with slim hips and broad, round shoulders, a foreign injury to the thigh. He is a long body and a keen eye. He will stroll, pause at a game or an individual, then continue as though he never stopped. His run is just the same. Loping, like a greyhound. Dips and counters. Holmes can follow the path of his movements even when Watson is moving with the sort of quiet that one only learns from serving in Afghanistan, and from having to push and sew parts of noisier fellows back into their bodies.  
  
Proof: a perfect demonstration from two weeks before. The day after Watson described this, Mary he will have just finished lunch with and forgone taking a carriage here to walk instead, in the river’s cooler air and unique scent. The first occasion Holmes noted a real change in colour and pitch in Watson’s description of a woman. The first occasion Holmes gave what he considers will become a customary excuse to not meet her.  
  
Dawn just rising red and wrong, and Watson with no shoes and no cane, passing silently back from the kitchen and in front of the study’s closed door. Holmes lay half-conscious on the tiger beside empty vials. Watson had pilfered toast from his very own breakfast tray— Mrs Hudson often does not even _bother to bring it up stairs_ any longer, the heathen woman. The smell dragged his eyes half open, mouth twitching against stiff fur, but then it was the sound that made Holmes blink slowly. Turn his face openly and _listen_ , following the sounds of Watson’s quiet body all the way upstairs. The tiny thread of muffled footfall, slight but uneven distribution of weight especially marked from Watson leaving bed far too early; blood aching stagnant in his thigh, face still soft. Unsettled too, then. Watson always a little too aware for his own good, even when he does not fully understand it. The whisper of his fingertips against the wallpaper. Holmes followed the sound, letting it pull him out of himself, back into consciousness, into readiness, into aches and sore bones.  
  
Point of fact: he can find it there, coming back from that place, and so he can find it anywhere. There is really no need for him to play this game with himself any longer. He should cease. Yet it is a strange sort of entertainment to indulge in; to listen, and find Watson before even seeing him. A strange sort of satisfaction, and a strange sort of pain.  
  
Here there are feet and shouts and chatter and pigeons and dogs and horses and dust, a paper seller, a street juggler two streets away, a fiddle even further and all underlain with the roll and rattle of carriages over the cobbles and holes. Somewhat of a cacophony, but just as he dismisses it as nothing there is a sudden addition – a heavy _crack_ of thunder. Holmes glances up in surprise as the echoes vibrate to nothing somewhere in his ribs. Everyone else on the street has stopped to do the same, barring the old drunk face down across the pavement with yesterday’s paper across the back of his sunburnt neck. A moment. A pause. Just enough to dash all hopes and let everyone resume the monotony– and suddenly a noise like pestle grinding mortar and the heavens _open_ with a shock of pouring rain.  
  
It's warm, and noisy, drops bursting against his toe-caps and scattering everyone around him as though a dog has just been kicked in the crowd. Woops and shouts. A couple knock past running for shelter, four dock workers run from The Jolly Sailor on the corner and hold up empty beer bottles to catch some, an elderly gentlemen in front tips his top hat to the sky and then hails a cab. Three children slap barefoot out of one alley beside Holmes and rush across the road into another, laughing. Shouts and windows slamming, the wheeze of the old drunk as he wakes, rolls over, puts the paper over his eyes instead and opens his mouth to let the water in.  
  
Holmes had not taken the time to predict rain for today. It was a categorical certainty, of course. An eventuality. Today is the third consecutive day of that specific summer heat that everyone in the city knows, the kind to curse and tread carefully around, wading through the days and waiting for the storm to come. A crack of utter relief. He should have known it would be today, and so he shouldn’t worn this particular bloody shirt because it is thin, and it will cling even worse than it did in the heat, even with the shirt sleeves rolled up and worn under a waistcoast that has never fitted well. He can’t even recall why he bought it.  
  
He is distracted, then.  
  
The cobbles change in the deluge; dry dust-brown to mottled grey, then slate. Holmes shuts his eyes behind his circular sunshades. These are the very same that Watson thinks ridiculous, which he has made a point to say – and yet has borrowed twice in the last month. He blocks it all out, cuts it off, and listens.  
  
Rapid slapdash of heels and boots and hands and voices and barking and hiss of _rain_.  
  
And Watson.  
  
One glance to confirm it and there he is. Coming up through the alley behind Holmes, the rogue.  
  
He has taken his hat off to grasp loosely in one hand and paused, tilting to lean on his cane and watch the water running off the gutter edges already. A spectacular arc by Holmes flicks straight through sunshine and into shadow again, drenching the opposite wall. Watson has no gloves, pale wrists, and wet, darkened hair. He is a lush, soft refraction seen through the sunlit spray.  
  
“You are positively indecent,” Holmes tells him. Watson lifts an eyebrow. Holmes twists his body to face him until just one shoulder is against the brick, and points, continues quickly, countering: “No jacket at all to speak of. What _can_ she have thought of you.”  
  
Watson snorts and kicks through a new puddle towards Holmes. “Quiet, you.”


End file.
